Supreme Court junks PIL against Farooq Abdullah, fines litigants

The Supreme Court has rejected a public interest litigation against former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah, which accused him of sedition for opposing the Modi government’s dilution of Article 370 of the Constitution.

Merely disagreeing with the government will not amount to sedition, a bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Hemant Gupta said on Wednesday, while imposing a fine of Rs 50,000 on petitioners Rajat Sharma and Neh Srivastava, belonging to Vishwa Guru India Vision of Sardar Patel.

“Expression of views which are different from the opinion of the government cannot be termed as seditious,” the bench said. The petition alleged that the former chief minister was trying to ‘hand over Kashmir to China’ and he should be prosecuted for sedition. The PIL quoted a claim of BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra that Abdullah had said that he was ready to seek Chinese help to undo dilution of Article 370.


The petition alleged that Abdullah ‘misused’ his right to free speech, guaranteed under the Constitution, to speak against India. It demanded that Abdullah’s membership of Parliament be terminated and the court act reasonably against him. It urged the court to make Abdullah a party to the case and seek an explanation from him on his alleged anti-India statements.

“Mr Farooq Abdullah has committed an offence punishable under Section 124-A of Indian Penal Code. As he has made the live statement that for restoring Article 370 he would take help of China which clearly amount to seditious act and therefore he is liable to be punished under section 124-A of the IPC,” the PIL alleged.